​Libya requests UNSC lift arms embargo to fight ISIS

The United Nations Security Council is pictured during a meeting about the situation in Libya in the Manhattan borough of New York February 18, 2015. (Reuters/Carlo Allegri) / Reuters

Libya and Egypt have asked the UN Security Council to lift restrictions on the import of arms to the embattled Libyan government, but dropped an Egypt-backed request for a military intervention to combat ISIS extremist threat.

“Libya needs a
decisive stance from the international community to help us build
or national army’s capacity and this would come through a lifting
of the embargo on weapons so our army can receive materiel and
weapons so as to deal with this rampant terrorism,” Mohamed
Al Dayri, Libya’s foreign minister told the Security Council. His
country slipped into chaos following the 2011 NATO-led
intervention which toppled Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s rule.

Al Dayri said that Tripoli is not asking for international
intervention, but international community has a “legal and
moral responsibility to lend urgent support.”

“The international community should render assistance in
restructuring [the Libyan] army. First of all, to arm the
troops,” Dayri said. “If we fail to have arms provided
to us, this can only play into the hands of extremists,” he
said noting that Tripoli did request that Egypt supports the
Libyan army. Dayri also warned that the whole Mediterranean
region is in danger.

Since Egypt intervened in Libya following the beheading of 21
Coptic Christians by ISIS, Cairo is taking an active role to
address the security concerns in the region, with Foreign
Minister Sameh Shukri backing Libya’s call for the arms embargo
to be lifted.

Shukri called for “concrete measures to prevent the
acquisition of arms by all non-state militias and entities
through the imposition of a naval blockade on arms heading to
areas of Libya outside the control of the legitimate
authorities.”

Non-permanent UN Security Council member Jordan submitted a draft
resolution, backed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and
Bahrain, to lift the embargo. Earlier on Wednesday the permanent
representatives to the Arab League held an emergency meeting as
well, calling on the United Nations to lift the embargo.

A weapons embargo was imposed on Libya in the final weeks of
Muammar Gaddafi’s rule, and currently a sanctions committee
decides whether shipments to the government should be allowed on
a case-by-case basis. The restrictions however have not prevented
illegal weapons from flowing into the country from all directions
since Gaddafi’s death.

Earlier Egypt’s anti-Islamist leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said
the world had “no choice” but to form a military force
to confront the Islamist Libya Dawn militants who have taken
control of large swathes of the North African country. Cairo had
already ordered airstrikes on key Islamist positions inside the
country, after an ISIS-inspired militia beheaded the 21
Christians. But Cairo failed to obtain sufficient support from
the West and other Arab states for a full-scale intervention.

Meanwhile, neighboring Tunisia is opposed to any military
intervention in Libya and considers that a political solution is
the most appropriate, the country’s PM Habib Essid said
Wednesday. He reminded that “the current instability in Libya
is a result of NATO's military intervention in that
country.”

Italy, which has been the final destination for some 170,000
Libyan refugees over the past year, has been pushing for a
diplomatic solution, and pledged at the Security Council meeting
to train Libyan armed forces.

“We have to be clear, the situation has deteriorated. The
time at our disposal is not infinite and is in danger of running
out soon,” the country’s foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni,
said. “Saying we are in the front line does not mean
announcing adventures or crusades.”

Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Libya,
Bernardino Leon, told the UNSC that in Libya, the Islamic State
found “fertile ground in the growing post revolution
political instability.”

In early February, jihadi fighters claimed responsibility for
several attacks in Libya and in recent weeks took over a
state-run television station and two radio stations in the city
of Sirte.

“The capture of public installations in Sirte and the attack
last month on the Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli reflect a growing
ability and determination of the part of Islamic State to exploit
the political crisis … to consolidate its presence and influence
across Libya,” Leon told the UN Security Council.

Political analysts worldwide agree that the current state of
affairs in the north African country is a direct consequence of
NATO’s aerial campaign.

The situation is “precisely the consequence of the kind of
war NATO waged in Libya, destroying the infrastructure,
collapsing the state, and allowing a bunch of different militia
groups to be treated as heroes,” Vijay Prashad, a professor
at Trinity College in Connecticut, and the author of Arab Spring,
Libyan Winter, told RT.

According to Prashad, the intervention “created the situation
where today there are two governments. And in that chaos, of
course, what breeds most effectively is this group that calls
itself the Islamic State.”

In the meantime NATO denies its responsibility for the crisis,
instead shifting the blame on other organizations and the
international community.

“We have to remember that the NATO operation for Libya was an
operation with a clear UN mandate. It was about protecting
civilians against attacks from the regime and we did that,”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claimed during a visit to
Latvia on Wednesday.

“I think the challenge has been what happened
afterwards,"Stoltenberg added."There should have been more follow
up, more presence of the international community, but that’s not
only a NATO responsibility. There are many different
international organizations.”